This year sees the release of the second Conspiracy set, Take the Crown. On the 20th of August Warez Gaming will be streaming a draft of the set at the Twitch channel Warezmycontroller, this stream will be the first chance to see some of the new set. Like the original Conspiracy set this set has been designed with multiplayer drafts and games in mind so today we will go over some of the different multiplayer formats you could use at home or at your local game store, these are just suggestions you can change the rules of these formats to suit how you and your play group want to play. Let’s start with the simplest of the formats:

8-Man Free For All

One of the simplest ways to play after you have built your deck is all 8 players sit around the table and play against each other. The person who is the last man standing is the winner. The free for all style is good if you have quite a lot of free time and love to play politics, at some point someone will offer anything not to be subjected to that attack that would lethal or the target of a Lightning Bolt for that last 3 damage. There are many different rule variations you can apply to make things more interesting. The first is to split the 8 players into two 4 player matches, normally those sat in odd seats become one game and those in even seats the other but you could assign people randomly. One of the benefits of splitting into two games is the games shouldn’t take as long to play. If you really wanted you could play two sets of games the top 2 players from each game could form another game and the bottom 2 from each form the last game. Let’s move on to some of the rules you can add to these games:

Limit Range of Influence (8 player, 4 player)

This variant focuses your attentions to a smaller group of players, if you set the range to two that means only the within two seats of you will be effected by or legal targets for your spells. For example if you played an 8 way game with a range of 1, when you play a spell like Day of Judgment only the creatures controlled by the players either side of you would die. Suggested limits: an 8 way game a limit of two or less and in a 4 way game a limit of 1. Once a player within your range dies then your range will include the player who was next to them. This style of play does take a big longer to play but it adds some interesting tactical elements to the game and removes the risk of one player being singled out by everyone else.

Hidden Ally (recommended 4 player, can be 8 player)

In hidden ally you are randomly assigned another player at the table (likely by drawing names out of a hat), this player is now your ally. The goal is to have it so that you and your ally are the only players left. What makes this fun is that it’s unlikely the player you drew as an ally will draw you as well, so you maybe trying to save a player who will be trying to kill you at the same time. This works better in smaller games as it means you aren’t fighting against 6 other players to keep your ally alive but you could put every name in twice and draw two allies but still win if you and at least one of your allies survive. While this doubles the number of players you need to protect it also means that there will be a second player helping protect each of them.

Star (8 players only)

To play the Star format sit down at the table and then count 2 players either side of you, these are your targets, the way you will win the game is to kill these two players, once both are dead then you win the game. The game stays as a free for all, which can add the interesting dynamic to the game as at different points in the game you could need to save another player from being killed because if they are killed then another player will win the game.

All these formats that have been looked at with the idea that a draft will have 8 players, although this number is ideal it’s sometimes not the reality of the things. Luckily a lot of the formats work on varying scales, 5 players is the minimum needed for a Star game. Anything that is based on Free-for-all rules will work at pretty much any number of players. Here is a format that works only with 6 or 9 players.

Emperor

Emperor is a team game, each three player team chooses an Emperor and the other two players become their Generals. Teams sit at the table with the Emperor in one seat and his Generals either side, the game then commences as a game with a range of influence setup that players can only effect the closest General and their Emperor first, so at the start of the game each General has a range of influence of 1 while Emperors have a range of 2 . The aim of the game is to be the last team with their Emperor alive, once your Emperor dies you team loses. If you have three teams playing this could potentially cause the game to progress very slowly, 9 individual turns per cycle would take quite some time to complete. There is a different turn structure you could use to speed things up a bit, have three active turns going to once but making sure the change of turns are in sync. What this means in practice is the members of the teams sat in the same spot all go at the same time, all the right hand generals, then all the emperor’s and finally all the left hand generals. Due to the limited ranges of influence not much should happen in the other turns happening that will influence your turn.

That’s it for this week if you have any comments about how you play these formats differently to what has been laid out or if you have another which I haven’t included feel free to post it the comments section. Don’t forget to tune in on the 20th to watch the set and next week will review what happened at the event, what worked and what didn’t.